The American College of Greece
PRE-2: Points of Distinction

On September 23-27, The American College of Greece hosted and co-organized the first Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Summer School, in collaboration with the network CSR Hellas and the University of Crete.

This five-day workshop welcomed over 30 participants (high executives, CEOs, etc.) from well-known Greek and multinational companies (APIVITA S.A., Coca Cola, TITAN Group, etc.) who learned about sustainability and corporate responsibility from world-class experts and worked on real-case scenarios, while earning a professional certificate of 10 ECTS credits from the University of Crete.

Participants were introduced to the following topics divided per workshop day: (1) Responsible organizations and sustainable management, (2) Corporate responsibility, the UN SDGs and the UN Global Compact, (3) Sustainable value creation, (4) Business impact, accountability, and reporting, and (5) Collaborative transformation of the value chain.
The workshop also featured two sketch artists who added a unique, creative, element on days one and two of the Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Summer School.

Based on our commitment to enhance our sustainability efforts as a community and in order to establish a sustainability culture on campus, the Office of Public Affairs and the Center of Excellence for Sustainability launched the #ACGgoesplasticfree campaign in the previous academic year (2018 – 2019).

Joining our forces to the global movement, we aim at raising awareness on the harmful consequences of single-use plastic pollution and guide ACG members in making a successful shift towards eliminating single-use plastics from our campus.

Renewing our commitment to raising awareness about the harmful consequences of single-use plastics and to reducing them both on campus and beyond, we are continuing our #ACGGoesPlasticFree Campaign in the academic year 2019 – 2020.

Last year, we took the following actions as part of our campaign: (a) Launched the ACG reusable water bottle, (b) Installed new, top-notch, hydration stations on campus, (c) Banned plastic cups at all ACG offices through a campus-wide policy, replacing them with biodegradable ones, (d) Upcycled old College banners that would otherwise be thrown away and turned them into new materials via our collaboration with the NGO ‘Institute Team Run for the World’. These upcycled gifts were used during the Deree – ACG Business Week 2019, (e) Placed signs at all ACG vendors to encourage use of reusable items when ordering beverages, food, etc., and (f) Celebrated the first ‘ACG Plastic Free Day’ in conjunction with the World Environment Day 2019!

Since November 2018, we are collaborating with the local NGO Boroume ("We Can") whose mission is to reduce food waste and to fight malnutrition in Greece. Specifically, we are participating in their "Boroume at the Farmers' Market" program that aims at reducing food waste at the farmers' markets.

In this context, we have ‘adopted’ a local farmers’ market, where every Monday, a group of 4-5 ACG members (students, faculty, and staff) gather the unsold and left-over produce from the market stands and we deliver it on the spot to a local charity supporting its soup kitchen and the guest house for young girls that lack the necessary funds to support their studies.

So far, we have gathered a total of 4.903 kg of produce and offered 302 hours of community service!